Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers Source, Had Uneasy Relationship With The Times

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The relationship between The New York Times and its most famous source, Daniel Ellsberg, reads like a thriller, replete with clandestine meetings, top secret documents and a war raging in the background.The connection was mutually beneficial. For Mr. Ellsberg, a former military analyst who died on Friday at age 92, exposing a secret government history about the Vietnam War changed how the nation thought about a conflict that he opposed. And the 1971 publication of the documents, which became known as the Pentagon Papers, burnished The Times’s reputation as a government watchdog.Yet Mr. Ellsberg had conflicted feelings about The Times.Mr. Ellsberg was happy with the prominent coverage The Times gave the Pentagon Papers — “their courage in doing that and the risks they undertook” — Mr. Ellsberg’s son Robert …

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